Whether played as a solitaire, cooperatively, or against other players, puzzle games have long been a popular pastime. One common genus of puzzle games is the permutation puzzle game, which concerns the transformation of a start permutation of items into one or more permutations that “solve” the puzzle, using one or more kinds of legal game moves.
For example, one well-known, three-dimensional permutation puzzle game is presented as a cube with six faces of nine colored “tiles” each, the tiles being arranged in a square upon each face and each tile displaying one of six colors. Players begin play from a “scrambled” start arrangement where each face displays tiles of multiple colors. Players then produce new arrangements of tiles by rotation clockwise or counterclockwise on one of six axes within the cube, and the objective is to obtain an arrangement of tiles such that each face is uniformly colored by one of the six respective colors. Performance in solving the puzzle can then be scored based on the time taken or the number of moves used by a player, among other criteria.
The number of different kinds of permutation games is limited only by human ingenuity. There remains significant demand for new permutation games for entertainment.